Last night I dreamt I saw my friend and colleague, the late Michael E. Jones, in some strange research facility I was visiting. I'm not sure where this research facility was, but it seemed to have a lot of physicists, and it looked like some kind of mixture of the Googleplex and Los Alamos. Anyway, it was sure sweet being able to see Mike again, and talking a little physics with him. I miss that guy. He was a great physicist and a great human being. It was a horrible tragedy how he died.

I just ran across a cool quote of Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee Nation:

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

For those of you who might remember, doesn't this almost remind you of the Desiderata -- that paragraph that everyone in the 1970s hung on their wall? Or the kinds of ethical sayings one would read in religious tracts like Ecclesiastes (Kohelet), or Sayings of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot)?